Download Category: History

THE COMPOSITION OF JEWISH COMMUNITIES IN EUROPE before the Second World War ensured the preservation of historical documents and data of most of the communities concerned. Apart from the fact that in the twentieth century nearly all the continental European communities were financially supported and controlled by the State, which demanded documentation of records, there were also sufficient numbers of Jews interested in their great historical past and concerned with Israel’s future destiny, to make it certain that the deeds of those who strove for Israel’s glory and good name, and the struggles of the Jewish masses, would not go unrecorded. The fortunate and happy position of the Jews in both America and England, where Jews have lived in freedom and upon terms of equality with their neighbours for three centuries, has also inspired numerous writers and research workers to inscribe upon the tablets of history the names of those who have contributed towards the welfare of their country or their people. Both the tercentenary celebrations held to commemorate the coming of the Jews to the United States of America and the tercentenary celebrations held to mark the return of the Jews to England were accompanied by the publication of numerous articles and books describing the part that Jews had taken in the advancement of England and America in the establishment and maintenance of their Jewish communities and activities. Time and numbers had created a Jewish pride in their past and in their lot.

THE HISTORY OF THE FRANKS BY GREGORY, BISHOP OF TOURS, is an historical record of great importance. The events which it relates are derails of the perishing of the Roman Empire and the beginning of a great modern state and for these events it is often the sole authority. However although Gregory was relating history mainly contemporaneous or recent, we must allow largely for error and prejudice in his statements of fact.

It is rather as an unconscious revelation that the work is of especial value. The language and style, the intellectual attitude with which it was conceived and written, and the vivid and realistic picture, unintentionally given, of a primitive society, all combine to make the History of the Franks a landmark in European culture.

After reading it the intelligent modern will no longer have pleasing illusions about sixth-century society.

Gregory’s life covers the years from 538 to 594. He was a product of central Gaul, spending his whole life in the Loire basin except for brief stays elsewhere[1].The river Loire may be regarded
as the southern limit of Frankish colonization and Gregory therefore lived on the frontier of the barbarians.

He was born and grew up at Clermont in Auvergne, a city to which an inexhaustibly fertile mountain valley is tributary. In this valley his father owned an estate. Its wealth brought Clermont much trouble during the disorderly period that followed the break-up of Roman rule, and Gregory gives a hint of the eagerness which the Frankish kings felt to possess this country.[2]

After 573 Gregory lived at Tours in the lower Loire valley. This city with its pleasant climate and moderately productive territorial background had more than a local importance in this age. It lay on the main thoroughfare between Spain and Aquitania and the north. Five Roman roads centred in it and the traffic of the Loire passed by it.

The reader of Gregory’s history judges that sooner or later it was visited by every one of importance at the time. It was here that the Frankish influences of the north and the Roman influences of the south had their chief contact.

However the natural advantages of Tours at this time were surpassed by the supernatural ones. Thanks to the legend of St. Martin this conveniently situated city had become “the religious Metropolis” of Gaul. St. Martin had made a great impression on his generation[3].

A Roman soldier, turned monk and then bishop of Tours, he was a man of heroic character and force. He had devoted himself chiefly to the task of Christianising the pagani or rural population of Gaul and had won a remarkable ascendancy over the minds of a superstitious people, and this went on increasing for centuries after his death.

THE PLANE TRUTH BY MY BROTHER BOB (ROBERT J. SCHADEWALD) has been a work in progress since at least 1984, although I’m sure the idea of it dates to the 1970s. It’s a work that is unfinished in places, perhaps more detailed than one would have thought possible in places, perfectly constructed in places, and all over the (flat) map in still other places. Bob worked on The Plane Truth until the week he died in 2000. Of all things, completing this book to his satisfaction was of the utmost importance to him. I believe that the book remained unfinished because Bob felt that it never met his standards closely enough to be published. Bob hovered over this book and wouldn’t allow it to come to fruition. My brother was an incredibly talented writer, but in some ways, I think, he was never totally satisfied with anything he had written. So he kept writing and rewriting this book. The dull glow of this not-quite-finished hue is evident in places within this work, but also the eloquence and beauty of Bob’s finished writing shines in other places.

The Plane Truth is offered for what it is: an unfinished scholarly work on the history and background of flat-earth belief sprinkled through with the characters and colourful personalities of those involved. “It’s a small, flat world” was a phrase Bob often used when hearing of some unlikely coincidence. For Bob, flat-earth analogy could fit almost any situation. When he discussed creationism (the precursor of intelligent design) he would explain the argumentation creationists used by comparing it to the argumentation Victorian, England, flat-earthers used. (Spoiler alert: they’re the same.) When creationists promoted a Two-Model Theory (creation/evolution) bill to be taught in schools, Bob wrote a bill called A Balanced Treatment of Flat-Earth Science and Spherical-Earth Science Act. The reaction of Charles Johnson (then president of the Flat Earth Society) can be found in Chapter 9: “Johnson and Johnson”.

It’s hard to know how Bob would have felt now with so many references to flat earth in use. Some examples include Thomas Friedman’s books, The World is Flat and Hot, Flat and Crowded; Flat Earth Productions (a digital visual effects company); Flat Earth Veggie Crisps; and, here in Minnesota, Flat Earth beer. I know for certain that he would have loved that last one.

My brother was a student of pseudoscience. It fascinated Bob to try to understand how someone could so firmly believe in an idea that almost everyone else would consider an indicator of insanity or, at least, naiveté. Bob studied not only flat-earth belief, but also creationism, perpetual motion, alternative geodesy (geocentricity, hollow earth, pole shift), Big Foot, the Loch Ness monster, and Tesla-mania, to name a few. Of all the pseudosciences Bob studied, flat-earth belief was one of the first and always his favourite. He studied flat-earth belief and history from about 1974. He formed acquaintances with as many people as he could find who believed that the Earth is flat. He travelled to England to research original materials of the British flat-earthers, and he corresponded with like-minded people all over the world in his quest to find out as much as he could about the development and fluctuations of flat-earth belief. He was considered a world expert on the topic.

GEOFFREY OF MONMOUTH’S HISTORIES OF THE KINGS OF BRITAIN was a medieval attempt to forge a national epic for the British people, shortly after the Norman conquest. Geoffrey invented a mythical back-history for the Britons, starting, as Virgil did, with a fugitive from the sack of Troy, named Brute or Brutus. The Histories includes many traditional tales, particularly a telling of the story of King Lear (who was originally a Celtic God, Lyr). He also inserts actual historical events such as Caesar’s invasion of Britain.

Geoffrey of Monmouth is a primary source for the Arthurian legends, one of the first published accounts. His Arthur has few of the romantic, mystical and miraculous motifs of later versions. Notably missing are the Round Table, the Grail, Guinevere’s affair with Lancelot, Excalibur, the Lady of the Lake, and the final journey to Avalon. Geoffrey’s Arthur is a national hero who unites a huge empire by the sword, and goes toe-to-toe with the Roman Empire. The translator speculates in the Epilogue that Arthur is meant to be an allegorical representation of King Henry I.

Embedded in the Histories is The Prophecies of Merlin, which retroactively predicts current events of Geoffrey’s time. Also available at this site is a bilingual edition of a later work which Geoffrey composed on the same theme, Vita Merlini, or Life of Merlin. Also of interest is his description of the theft of Stonehenge from Ireland: uncannily recognizing that the stones had been moved from a long way away. This is the first appearance on the Internet of this translation of Geoffrey’s Histories.

SACRED ISLE: by tradition Britain is a sacred isle of immense antiquity, home of divinatory arts and a repository of souls; Greek writers were wont to write of ‘the secrets of the island of Britain’

To the peoples of antiquity the isle of Britain was the very home and environment of mystery, a sacred territory, to enter which was to encroach upon a region of enchantment, the dwelling of the gods, the shrine and habitation of a cult of peculiar sanctity and mystical power. Britain was, indeed, the insula sacra of the West, an island veiled and esoteric, the Egypt of the Occident.’ (Lewis Spence, The Mysteries of Britain, 1905)

Britain was home to the first Christian realm [see below, Christianity] and long before that Druidism was invented on the island [see below, Druidism]; the extraordinary antiquity and spread of British influence is advertised in the following quotation:

THE BOMBER SAVES CIVILISATION‘: my first chapter heading may strike some readers as a paradox, possibly as a perversion of the truth, at best as an overstatement made for the purpose of calling attention to what I have to say. It is nothing of the kind. I am not trying to shock or to bamboozle the reader. I am stating the truth as the truth appears to me. The bomber is the saver of civilisation. We have not grasped that fact as yet, mainly because we are slaves to pre-conceived conceptions about air warfare. Air warfare is the dog with a bad name. The bad name is, on the whole, a calumny. This book is an attempt to rehabilitate it, not against the facts of the case but because of the facts of the case. Civilisation, I believe firmly, would have been destroyed if there had been no bombing in this war. It was the bomber aircraft which, more than any other instrument of war, prevented the forces of evil from prevailing. It was supposed to be the chosen instrument of aggression. Actually, it was precisely the opposite. Aggression would have had a clearer run if there had been no bombers—on either side. And the greatest contribution of the bomber both to the winning of the war and the cause of peace is still to come.

TO BENJAMIN H. FREEDMAN, who committed himself to finding and telling the facts about Zionism and Communism. and encouraged others to do the same. The son of one of the founders of the American Jewish Committee, which for many years was anti-Zionist, Ben Freedman founded the League for Peace with Justice in Palestine in 1946. He gave me copies of materials on the Balfour Declaration which I might never have found on my own and encouraged my own research. (He died in April 1984.)
The Institute for Historical Review is providing means for the better understanding of the events of our time.
Attempts to review historical records impartially often reveal that blame, culpability, or dishonour are not to be attached wholly to one side in the conflicts of the last hundred years. To seek to untangle fact from propaganda is a worthy study, for it increases understanding of how we got where we are and it should help people resist exploitation by powerful and destructive interests in the present and future, by exposing their working in the past.
The Balfour Declaration may be the most extraordinary document produced by any Government in world history. It took the form of a letter from the Government of His Britannic Majesty King George the Fifth, the Government of the largest empire the world has even known, on which — once upon a time — the sun never set; a letter to an international financier of the banking house of Rothschild who had been made a peer of the realm.
Arthur Koestler wrote that in the letter “one nation solemnly promised to a second nation the country of a third.” More than that, the country was still part of the Empire of a fourth, namely Turkey. It read: